


nostos

by figure8



Series: ithaka [1]
Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Greece, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/figure8
Summary: “Achilles gives up home for glory,” Minghao recites. He knows the story. He’s read the book.“Achilles gives uplovefor glory,” Junhui corrects him. “There is no home for the Greek hero, not one made out of marble at least.”





	nostos

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [kpopolymfics2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/kpopolymfics2019) collection. 



> **kevin oh - "lover"**  
> [lyrics](https://popgasa.com/2018/07/25/kevin-oh-lover-%EC%97%B0%EC%9D%B8/) **|** [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL_vmjEAhA0) **|** [supplementary](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fd/78/33/fd78331e11b1dfd48545a89ad1a8fb5e.jpg) \- [prompts](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/56/21/d7/5621d70410dc72d3f9f7af0c8290bffd.jpg)
> 
> —
> 
> this fic was written for k-pop olymfics 2019 as part of team alternate universe 2. olymfics is a challenge in which participants write fics based on prompt sets and compete against other teams of writers, organized by genre. competition winners are chosen by the readers, so please rate this fic using [this survey](https://forms.gle/5mf4FTmvMUMCJ9d26)!
> 
> —
> 
> shower thought #32765: we set stories in the united states all the time, transforming our characters' roots fundamentally sometimes without really interrogating _why_ or _how_ because americanism is the default in most of our minds. there is no justification needed, no logic: the west is an easy canvas, a universally accepted starting point. this story is, among many, many things, a response to that. after weeks and weeks researching places i had never been to in order to set it in california, i asked myself why i wasn't writing about _home_ and realized that well, i _could_.  
> so here we are. it's a love song, and a sad song, and a song about making your way back where you belong. i’ve put a lot of myself in it, in more ways than one - i hope there is something there for each and every one of you too.
> 
> a gigantic thank you to R and S. you are the best support system one could ever ask for. i love you.  
> and of course, thank you to my olymfics team and the olymfics mods, for making this fest a reality. you guys rock!! 
> 
> this fic has a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/thedeadrobin/playlist/26a8esBS6pbJg0W4V66E9E?si=B_WIYT_mTjmaaqwGD1psig) that i frankly still think is better at conveying what i was trying to get at here than the story itself 
> 
> enjoy <3

**nos·tos**

/ˈnɒstɒs/

_noun_

from anc. greek _νόστος_

  1. homecoming
  2. the journey back, the quest
  3. return to light and life



 

**-**

_Laistrygonians, Cyclops,_  
_wild Poseidon - you won’t encounter them_  
_unless you bring them along inside your soul,_ _  
unless your soul sets them up in front of you._

— C. P. Cavafy

**-**

 

Driving down the _Paraliaki_ at full speed is a little like playing Russian roulette - except in place of a gun there is the road, burning asphalt and half-erased signs, and the bullets are the other drivers. Every guide book Minghao’s ever picked up warns tourists not to wander down Poseidon’s Avenue where it merges into the highway and becomes GR-91, right after Glyfada. At night it stops being a road and transforms into a circuit: windows down, hip-hop blasting loud enough to vibrate through the cement, young men from all over Europe come here to chase adrenaline to its very last drop.

At four in the afternoon in October, the danger is less street racing, more regular racing. The kind you do against the clock, and yourself, and life in general. Minghao’s grip tightens around the steering wheel. On his right Junhui rolls up the window. Minghao paid for a new entertainment system the previous summer, to finally be able to play CDs and connect mobile phones through the aux, but the windows of their old blue Mercedes remain frozen in time. No handy little buttons, just the good old-fashioned manual mechanism.

“It’s going to rain,” Junhui says, motioning to the clouds in the horizon. Away, unattainable, the sky is grey and upset.

Lately Junhui has been metaphorically rolling up windows a lot. Every time he looks outside there seems to be a storm brewing. The upholstery, somehow, still ends up drenched anyway.

Part of the drive along the coast goes through the mountains, inside sinuous man-made cavities drilled through hard rock. In the tunnels the radio turns into static, all signal lost. Minghao has to raise his voice to be heard above the noise.

“If we don’t stop we can make it to Metéora before nightfall.”

Junhui tsks before reaching for the stereo. “You know it’s gonna be in and out of the tunnels for the next twenty minutes and yet you _never_ switch off the damn radio.”

 _I like white noise,_ Minghao doesn’t say. _I think it’s calming._ They’ve taken the _Paraliaki_ so many times. There is no other way out of Athens.

Junhui’s voice is softer when he adds, “Let’s pull over at the next rest stop, okay? I’ll get us coffees and you can go pee. You’ve been bouncing your leg for the past thirty minutes.”

They take the exit a few kilometers later. In the parking lot Junhui looks at the McDonald’s and then at the Flocafé and then at Minghao before wordlessly deciding on _more expensive, better espresso._ They’ve always been good at this. Almost-telepathy, finding each other in the dark.

The gas station restrooms are absolutely disgusting, but Minghao would be more surprised if they weren’t. Above the broken mirror someone spray-painted a swastika in black, and then someone else attempted to cover it with a red A. There is a metaphor in there somewhere, Minghao is sure.

“Cappuccino Freddo,” Junhui welcomes him back with a grin. Minghao accepts the iced drink gratefully. Junhui is sipping on his usual gross ultra sweet frappé. “You want me to drive?”

Minghao shakes his head. “In an hour, maybe.” He already knows he won’t give Junhui the wheel before it’s dark outside.

They pass Thebes in relative silence. Neither one of them has thought of turning the radio back on, and Junhui has been drifting in and out of sleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the road, like a boat at sea. On their right Kokkinovrachos stands tall like a god. Mountains in Greece never quite look like mountains - instead they take the shape of men, warriors guarding ancient cities and ancient secrets Minghao has long given up on uncovering.

When he was ten his father took him to Mount Olympus. The hardest part hadn’t been the long, strenuous trek to the top, but discovering there was no divine palace awaiting him. No Zeus, no Athena, no heroes.

Junhui jerks awake suddenly a few minutes before they arrive in Lamía. Eyelashes fluttering, disoriented, he pushes himself back upwards and untangles his arm from his seatbelt. He looks like a lost kitten, nose scrunched up stubbornly. Minghao can’t help the fond smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty,” he teases. Junhui glares.

“You said you’d let me drive.”

“Tomorrow,” Minghao says.

Junhui squints. “You just want to avoid the traffic in Thessaloniki, you heathen.”

Minghao chuckles. “Well, you’re better at it than I am.”

“You can’t be _good_ at traffic,” Junhui rolls his eyes.

Minghao disagrees. Sometimes driving to work he has to actively remind himself murder is illegal. He knows Jun doesn’t have this problem.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, mostly to change the subject. “We’re passing through a city.”

Junhui yawns. “Are we already in Thessaly?”

“Nah. But we can still get something to eat.”

Junhui pulls up Google Maps on his phone, frowning. “Oh, I didn’t sleep as much as I thought. Hey, there’s a good taverna ten minutes from here.”

Outside the air is singing. In Athens the atmosphere is always heavy, pollution settling above the city like a winter coat. Here every breath tastes like pine and even the lights in Lamía are brighter, sharper. Minghao feels suddenly overtaken by the need to stand up and yell like in one of those ridiculous American movies about finding yourself.

“I could go for fish,” he smiles.

They park the car on the outskirts of the city and walk to the restaurant, side by side. Minghao feels the few centimeters between them in the same way one feels the salt on a papercut when they dive into the sea: the tiniest sting, the faintest reminder.

They find a small table for two in a corner on the terrace. The white plastic chairs drag against the ground, adding to the general cacophony - folk music blaring from two speakers mounted to the wall, a woman’s voice shouting instructions from the kitchen, loud laughter and loud arguments and loud chatter mixing together into just _loud._

A waiter appears almost instantaneously with a notepad and a bottle of water.

“Good evening,” he greets them in stilted, heavily accented English, “What can I get you?”

“Hi,” Junhui shoots back in Greek, “Can you tell us the specials?”

It truly never ceases being funny, in Minghao’s opinion, the double-take people make when the _words_ don’t match the _face._

“Uh,” their waiter stumbles, but in his defense it barely takes him a second before he’s firing the list of dishes at them faster than a stone rolling down a hill.

They order sardines and fried zucchini and spetsofai because they are in Central Greece, after all. The fish is good, crispy, not too oily. Junhui is a bigger fan of sausages than Minghao is, so he finishes the main course, cleans up the plate with a piece of bread.

“You have sauce under your nose,” Minghao tells him. He tries to get it with a napkin twice and fails, so Minghao just shakes his head and wipes it away with his thumb. Junhui stares at him but doesn’t say anything.

“We have two hours left if we want to get to Kalampáka. It’s already night out.”

Minghao raises an eyebrow. “You want to sleep here?”

“I want to order some Tsipouro,” Junhui smirks.

Minghao knows _that_ look. Has seen it on Junhui when they were smaller than this table, right before his best friend dragged him into an adventure that inevitably would get them both grounded. Has seen it on Junhui in high school, in college, on the side of the road, between the waves of the Aegean.

He flags the waiter for a bottle.

 

Junhui’s mouth tastes like anise and spices when he presses Minghao up against the wall in the small motel room they just rented for the night. Minghao fists a hand in Junhui’s white shirt, tugs him closer, _closer._ He feels the cold concrete against his shoulder blades, real and foreign; Junhui’s body caging him in, real and familiar.

“Jun,” he gasps, head tilting to the side reflexively to allow Junhui access to his neck. “Jun, Junnie -”

Junhui drags his teeth along the line of his jaw, peppers kisses down the column of his throat. His nose is icy against Minghao’s skin and yet everything is burning, burning.

“You’re drunk,” he manages to say, the hand still in Junhui’s shirt this time tugging _away._

“Want you,” Junhui mumbles. “Missed you.”

The ache in Minghao’s body takes these words as if they were food, grows from them. It hurts to push Junhui away.

It hurts to keep him there, too.

“Jun, no.”

Junhui lets him go but doesn’t really move. His breath comes harsh and short on Minghao’s face. His body heat is palpable, almost visible, like an aura.

For a long, excruciating minute, they stare into each other’s eyes.

“Okay,” Junhui says. He detaches himself from Minghao so slowly, like a magnet fighting against the gravitational pull. “Let’s go to bed, then.”

 

In the morning he’s grateful, for once, for this country’s assumptions about men, and the two twin beds, and the meter between them.

 

Junhui drives from Lamía to Metéora, two canned espressos swimming in his bloodstream. Minghao watches him watch the road. He’s still golden from the summer, blond hair light from the sea and the sun, skin honey-kissed. It’s hard to stop looking at him. Minghao wants to apologize, but apologizing would mean talking, and _talking,_ well. It’s just not something they do. Not anymore.

When they get to Kalampáka it’s barely eleven. The sky is blue, all clouds chased away by the wind. Metéora is as imposing as Minghao remembers - the six monasteries nested between the giant rocks surmount the city of Kalampáka like a reminder built out of stones and blood. God is watching.

“We should grab a sandwich somewhere and head directly to the hill,” Junhui says, attention fixed entirely on the narrow little street he’s trying to navigate out of. There are kids everywhere, it’s lunch time. Minghao peeks his head out of the car window.

“Hey,” he yells, “Get back on the damn sidewalk!”

A chorus of _sorry, sir,_ answers him. Junhui chuckles. “Thank you.”

They find public parking after twenty minutes of roaming aimlessly through paved streets that somehow seemed to get tinier and tinier at every turn. It’s a short walk downtown, where Junhui finds the highest rated Souvlaki place on Yelp so that they can get two chicken gyros and a can of Coca Cola that they share on a green wooden bench, facing the main square. Minghao brings his knees to his chest, rests his chin on the back of his hand.

“You remember when we were kids,” Junhui starts, “And you didn’t speak Greek well yet, and you didn’t know how to say cucumber?”

“No,” Minghao says, although he does remember, vaguely. Junhui was born here. Minghao arrived at six years old, confused and scared and angry. In Metaxourgeio there were enough Chinese families even in the nineties for him to cheat, go back to the safety of Mandarin and hide. Junhui taught him how to say cucumber, and dog, and ice cream, and corner store, and friend.

“My mom never really thought of here as home, you know?” Junhui says. “It was always meant to be temporary.” He licks the paper wrapping of his gyro to catch the last drop of tzatziki. Twenty four years, Minghao thinks, is a long time not to unpack.

“Do you think here is home?” he asks.

“I think home has many meanings,” Junhui shrugs. “I have a Greek passport.”

“You have a Chinese passport too.”

“Many meanings,” Junhui smiles. “And even now that it’s worthless, I don’t think I’d trade the brown one for the world.”

“It’s different, for me.”

Junhui nods. “Because you came here later?”

“Because I don’t know how to make a space for myself,” Minghao says. “Not like you do.”

Junhui stays silent for a moment. “I think you’re adaptable,” he says finally.

“I guess,” Minghao says. “But it’s more than that. I can survive anywhere. You make places yours.”

And inside Minghao, too, there is a room Junhui built with his hands. A room he carved out of Minghao’s ribcage, his bones the ceiling and the floor, his chest the foundations. Close to where his heart pumps oxygen in and out, there is a cavity in which Junhui resides, even when they are apart, even when there are oceans between them.

“Come on,” Junhui says, pushing himself off the bench, purposefully avoiding his gaze. “The sun is gonna be unbearable if we wait.”

There are stairs and a pathway up Metéora. They don’t have time to visit all the monasteries, so they climb up to the Katholikon first, because it also hosts a small museum. It’s not the highest point but the view is breathtaking already, and not for the first time Minghao wishes he had brought his camera with him. His iPhone will have to do.

“Careful,” Junhui bumps their shoulders together, pointing to the small holes in the dirt on the ground, “Scorpions.”

“Okay, country boy,” Minghao laughs.

“I’m serious,” Junhui insists. “When you find one in your shoe you won’t think it’s funny anymore.”

It’s cute. They’ve been to much less civilized places together, from the mountains of Arkadia to the ruins in Delos. Junhui still thinks he has to protect Minghao from everything, like he doesn’t jump on tables at the mere mention of spiders.

Inside the church Junhui lights a candle. The icons stare down at them severely, from the ceiling, from the walls. Minghao has never felt comfortable confronted with saints.

This is a country that follows the Holy word more than it follows the seasons. This is a country with a cross on its flag. The other flag Minghao swears allegiance to has stars and blood on it. Religion has many faces and many bodies. None of them has ever welcomed him with open arms.

“Did you make a wish?” he whispers.

“It’s not a birthday cake, Xiao Hao,” Junhui huffs.

“Does it work even if you’re not baptized?”

Affection seeps through Junhui’s tone like warm chocolate syrup. “You tell me. Do you feel blessed? I always pray for you.”

Anger mixes with tenderness like oil and water, swirling and swirling and never quite settling down. _You can’t say stuff like that. You just can’t say stuff like that._

 

They get shaved ice in town. Minghao picks lime, and Junhui holds both their cups for a while because he knows Minghao’s stomach starts hurting every time he eats something frozen. Junhui’s tongue turns blue after just a few bites - the cherry flavor, for some reason, isn’t _red._

If they kissed it would be too sour.

 

When they check in to their hotel the lady at the counter congratulates Junhui on his Greek. Minghao’s hand finds his blindly, squeezes. Junhui beams at her and explains patiently that he was born in Makedonia.

“Oh,” she exclaims, clearly still confused but happy, “Are you driving back home?”

She thinks they’re brothers, Minghao realizes. This, somehow, stings more than being mistaken for a foreigner in the country you grew up in. It’s absurd, because his claim on Junhui is tenuous at best.

“It’s my baby brother’s birthday,” Junhui nods.

The room is nice. Terracotta walls, flowers on the nightstands. A few years ago every time they stayed in hotels Junhui would insist on pushing the beds together, even when they were so heavy they might as well have been nailed to the floor.

Jun just takes in the space, puts the key on the small table in the entryway.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” he announces.

Minghao flops onto one of the beds. After his high school graduation, to celebrate his ridiculously high placement on the panhellenic exams, his parents got him the Mercedes. He and Junhui drove all the way to the Peloponnese that summer, their first adult trip, unsupervised. In Tripoli the place they rented had this giant rainfall shower that could fit a small army. Minghao can still picture the scene with terrifying clarity. He remembers how hard the tiled floor was against his knees. He remembers the water going cold. He remembers Junhui’s hair, wet, slicked back.

Junhui walks back into the room shirtless, towelling his hair. Minghao’s irises follow the journey this one solitary drop of water takes down the plane of his abs, torturously slow.

“Are we going out to eat?” Junhui asks, scanning the room for a free outlet to plug the hairdryer in.

“There’s one behind that chair,” Minghao tells him. “I don’t know, do you want to?”

Junhui shrugs. “Why not? We took the vacation days, might as well use them on, you know -” He gestures vaguely. “Vacationing.”

“I’m going to shower too, then,” Minghao pushes himself off the mattress.

Under the spray images come back to haunt him. Junhui head thrown back, Adam’s Apple bobbing, torso covered in bruises Minghao _put there._ Lovebites. Funny word for _I wanted you so much I dug my fangs into your flesh._

He shakes his head like a wet dog fresh out of the river. He’s not going to touch himself with Jun standing in the other room.

When he gets out of the bathroom Jun is fully dressed, hair dry and styled carefully. Minghao wants to run his fingers through it, mess it up.

“Wear the red shirt,” Junhui tells him.

He puts on the red shirt and his favorite pair of jeans. His hair drips onto the collar.

“Come here,” Junhui sighs, towel in hand. He rubs Minghao’s neck with it, kisses the top of his head.

In the dark Kalampáka takes on a new life. Stray dogs barking and teenagers laughing and cars honking; all this with God still bearing witness from the mountain. The breeze slips under clothes like a wandering hand, traitorous like a snake. Minghao shivers.

“You didn’t take a jacket?”

Annoyance bubbles up inside Minghao like boiling water on the stove. “No, I did not take a jacket, obviously.” Junhui takes off his sweater. He just has a tank top underneath. Minghao hisses. “Are you out of your mind?”

Junhui just arches a brow. “Take it. Until we get to the restaurant at least.”

It smells like him. _Acqua di Giò,_ and the Marseille soap he uses, and a little bit of their car, too. It’s soft. Minghao burrows himself into it.

“Here,” Junhui points to a small shop with a red door. “You said you wanted kazandibi. I found you an authentic Anatolian place.”

Minghao remembers mentioning he hadn’t had satisfying kazandibi since that small hole in the wall they used to go to in Monastiraki closed because of the crisis, but that was _months_ ago. The lump in his throat expands like a dying star, supernova eating everything in its wake. He doesn’t want to _cry._

They share a large plate of Iskender kebab and some imam bayildi. There is a tiny candle on the table between them, its flame like a border wall. Every time he goes to take something from Junhui’s plate with his fork, the heat hits the inside of his wrist, warm caress. When the waitress comes for their dessert orders, Junhui tells her they came specifically for the kazandibi, and she brings them four shots of raki on the house.

The pudding is sweet, slightly charred, exactly as it ought to be. Minghao chases the treacle taste with his first shot. The raki travels down his esophagus, a clear zigzag of fire. Junhui downs his shots one after the other.

Minghao offers him the last bite. He leans down over the table, closes his lips around Minghao’s spoon, holding his gaze.

Minghao drinks his second shot, chokes on the bitterness of it, and looks away.

 

The journey from Metéora to Thessaloniki takes barely three hours, but the traffic to _enter_ the city easily adds two. The first time they made the drive years ago Minghao almost died of dehydration stuck on the highway with no water under forty degree weather, the sun blazing at its zenith. Since then they’ve both learned their lesson and take one last stop to stock up on water bottles and snacks in Kozani, roughly an hour before the traffic hits.

It’s not July heat, but their car is old and so is its AC. After a while not moving it starts feeling less like a vehicle and more like an oven. Junhui just emptied his second kid-sized carton of chocolate milk and he’s getting restless.

“Did you call your mom?” Minghao asks.

Junhui side-eyes him. “Obviously.”

“You don’t have to take that tone, I was just making sure.”

Junhui’s fingers tap rhythmically against the steering wheel. A heartbeat. A broken melody.

“I don’t want to fight, Hao.”

 _Maybe I want to fight,_ Minghao wants to yell. _And then we’d know. Then we’d be sure._

He bites his tongue instead, until it bleeds, metallic and acrid.

“Hao,” Jun tries again.

“Forget about it.”

Bodies angled away from each other like enemy arrows, this is the way they sit now. This is the way they fall asleep too, but not the way they wake up. They wake up like closed parentheses still, an almost circle. When Minghao was sixteen and first reading Plato he learnt about soulmates and missing halves and pictured Junhui in every mirror he encountered. That was before he even really had a word for it. _Love. Desire. Forgiveness._

He can see in the tense set of Jun’s shoulder that he doesn’t want to _forget about it,_ but still Jun lets it go. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t hold on.

Thessaloniki is a city of mysteries. On its shoulders rest many giants - a history too heavy for one people and a sadness vaster than the Mediterranean, and enough gold to feed the Balkans three times over. Junhui jokes sometimes that he’s Makedon first, Chinese second, Greek third. Minghao only knows Athens and Beijing - two cities too busy being their entire country to really ever offer much regionalism. This gap between them, maybe, is unbridgeable.

There is graffiti everywhere. Any free wall in Greece is a blank canvas, but in Thessaloniki street art takes new proportions. They’re not even in the city center yet and already left and right stars and hammers and sickles look like hungry shapeshifters ready to materialize and attack. In any other circumstance Minghao would have stopped the car for pictures, but they’re trying to make it to Junhui’s parents’ before noon.

When they pull up in the driveway Junhui’s mother is already there, door open, eyes a little red. Junhui stops the car and turns to look at Minghao.

“I know,” Minghao says quietly.

He wouldn’t want his parents to know either.

Then Junhui does something unexpected. He leans over and plants a gentle kiss to Minghao’s cheekbone, loving, knowing.

Fengjun _propels_ himself into Junhui’s arms the second his big brother is out of the Mercedes. He turns fourteen in a few hours but to Minghao he’ll always be this small thing the Wens brought home one day, alien and fragile.

Face buried in Junhui’s shirt, Fengjun hiccups, “Mama said you weren’t coming.” He sounds accusing and exhilarated at the same time in this particular way only kids manage, like a superpower one can graduate out of.

Junhui ruffles his hair, presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “Surprise!”

“I don’t like surprises,” Fengjun mumbles, but he still refuses to let go of his brother.

Junhui unsticks himself from Fengjun’s iron grip just enough to stare at him with an exaggerated dubious look. “You really think I’d miss your birthday? Have I _ever_ missed your birthday?”

“No,” Fengjun pouts.

“Minghao,” Junhui’s mother calls, reluctantly tearing her eyes from her sons, “What are you waiting for?”

“Hello, Auntie,” Minghao bows. _Space. I’m giving you space. I’m giving him space._

“You’re skinnier,” she assesses, brows furrowing. “Wen Junhui, you let him starve like that?”

“Mama,” Junhui laughs, aerial, “You have no idea the quantities this little punk eats. It just melts right off him. Completely unfair. _I_ have to go to the gym, you know.”

Inside the house is still the same as the last time Minghao was here, frozen in time except for the framed pictures of the boys which mark its passing.

He greets Junhui’s father and readies himself for the questions in rapid fire. Yes, work is good. Yes, he’s booked his plane ticket to see his parents for New Year’s already. No, rent in Athens doesn’t seem to want to go down. Yes, Jun sleeps correctly. No, they haven’t found a bigger apartment. Yes, it was raining when they left, just like the weather guy said. Yes, the climate is going crazy.

“Oh,” Fengjun interrupts excitedly, “I’m doing a presentation for school on global warming.”

“You can show them after lunch,” his mother instructs. “Minghao, come help me set the table.”

The table is already set, but Minghao goes pliantly and recognizes the call for what it is - an occasion for Junhui to talk to his father.

The kitchen smells delicious. Junhui is a good cook, and Minghao is decent, but lately their schedules are so unaligned it’s usually not worth making anything sophisticated. It feels like he hasn’t had homemade Chinese food in ages.

The way they sit, how food is served, how Junhui addresses his parents, Fengjun’s sparkling eyes, the faint sounds of the TV left on in the living room; colors and tastes and voices that are home - home unearned and home inconsistent but home nonetheless. _I don’t want to lose this,_ Minghao hears inside his skull, reverberating. It’s the voice in his head, the one that tells the truth even when the truth is pathetic, even when the truth sounds less like a statement and more like an admission of defeat.

_But you must. You must._

 

It’s never discussed, an implicit agreement. When they’re here Minghao sleeps in Junhui’s room.

He thought this would change, when Junhui came out. He remembers, distinctly, one of his worries being selfish - _are they going to keep us apart now?_ He didn’t know Junhui wanted him back, then.

The thing is, Junhui’s parents love him more than they hate difference, love him more than they fear the unknown.

So when they’re here Minghao sleeps in Junhui’s room.

 

After Tripoli, after things had _changed,_ Minghao didn’t know what was allowed anymore. Touching, looking, _touching_ \- everything they had done innocently for years was now carrying a new, impossible meaning.

Everyone had to know. From the way he couldn’t unglue his hands from Junhui, from the way his eyes searched for him in every crowd, from the way breathing came easier in pair.

After Tripoli, he hadn’t known how to look Junhui’s mother in the eye again. How to ask for forgiveness.

_Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so hungry. I take and I take and yet I’m still so hungry. I will eat him whole if he lets me, and I think he will let me._

Under the covers Junhui had slipped his hand under Minghao’s pajamas, kissed him on the mouth.

_You’re going to fuck me in your childhood bedroom?_

 

He’s staring at the same ceiling almost six years later. Junhui went to pick up a second set of bedsheets.

Outside the wind screams like a lonely wolf.

 

When you love like a sea monster, when you love like Circe, there are no happy returns.

“The choice, really, isn’t between safety and glory,” Junhui says.

Minghao blinks. They’re standing in the middle of an empty classroom. He recognizes the scribble on the blackboard from his first year of university, which is strange, because he and Jun didn’t go to the same school.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Junhui narrows his eyes, feline. “Keep up, Xiao Hao. We’re talking about the Iliad.”

Right. Even aspiring engineers take _Intro to Philology._

“ _Kleos_ ,” Junhui smiles, opening his right palm like a lotus flower. “Immortality through song. Eternal glory. But! A short mortal life. A painful heroic end.” Minghao nods. Junhui unfolds his left hand. “ _Nostos_. A homecoming song. The Great Escape, really. A safe return from war. A safe return from death.”

“Achilles gives up home for glory,” Minghao recites. He knows the story. He’s read the book.

“Achilles gives up _love_ for glory,” Junhui corrects him. “There is no home for the Greek hero, not one made out of marble at least.”

Odysseus returns to Ithaca. Odysseus returns to Penelope.

Achilles, in a way, returns to Patroclus, their aches mingling, the dust of their bones powder in the dirt.

“Oh,” Minghao says. Then he wakes up.

 

“You were twisting in your sleep,” Junhui tells him, worried, in the morning. “You called for me.”

“I had a dream,” Minghao says, reaching for his hairbrush.

Junhui tilts his head to the side. “A nightmare.”

“No,” Minghao shakes his head after a moment of reflexion. “No, it was a dream.”

 

There will be cake, and candles; but first there is a bowl of longevity noodles Fengjun slurps down dutifully under their careful gazes. In Junhui’s eyes there is tenderness like gold - solid and raw and _mineral,_ essential and stripped down to its purest form. This is what he looks like when he loves unconditionally, when he loves boundlessly, and unburdened.

The cake is chocolate and strawberry. Fengjun blows his 14-shaped candle and beams up at his family, and they sing the song in Chinese, then in Greek, then in English. Jun has icing on his nose and Minghao leans in, unthinking, to lick it away. He remembers where he is - when he is - exactly one beat too late.

Except no one but _Junhui_ seems surprised. A struck expression on his face, he smiles tentatively. Minghao smiles back. When they move to the living room to open presents, Junhui sits pressed against him, connected through vital points - shoulder, elbow, hip, thigh, knee.

They got Fengjun a model airplane, one of these kits that you can build and paint. Picked it together at Jumbo, spent an hour in the aisle to find the perfect one. Junhui joked it was probably the last year he’d get away with getting his brother something from a toy store. Minghao watches Fengjun destroy the wrapping paper and wonders if next year Junhui will buy his present with a stranger.

They slip back seamlessly into old routines. Junhui with his hands in the sink, Minghao in front of the drying rack, the radio playing old _laïka._ Yiorgos Dallaras is currently lamenting that the motherland has abandoned him, and Minghao hums along.

It happens fast. It happens in slow motion. Junhui passes him a blue porcelain bowl, Minghao catches it with slippery fingers and lets it fall and shatter on the ground.

“Shit,” he swears under his breath.

“Shit,” Junhui swears loudly. They stare at each other for one long awful minute.

“I’ll get the broom,” Minghao says, cheeks burning. Junhui is already on his knees, picking up the few pieces that are too big to be vacuumed. “Jun, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Junhui ignores him. Minghao squats down too, repeats, “Jun.”

“What?”

“I broke it, I clean it.”

“I’m not sure you’re the one who let it go, actually.”

Minghao sighs. “Please let me get the damn broom before you cut yourself.”

He cuts himself anyway. One shard, deep in his pointer finger like a thorn. Minghao drags him to the bathroom and opens the first aid kit, precariously balanced on the edge of the sink.

“I told you to be careful.”

“You told me to get off the floor,” Junhui retorts, because he loves playing with words. Minghao is tired. He plucks out the thin piece of ceramic with a pair of tweezers and wraps a pink bandaid around Junhui’s index.

“I’m sorry about the bowl,” he says, closing the bathroom drawer.

“I told you, it was my fault too.”

When they were kids, coming back from the sea, they’d rinse the salt and sand off their skin in the yard first, with the green garden hose, so as not to bring mud inside. One time Minghao turned the sillcock to its extremity, opening the valve, and the water came out with such force the hose stood up like a charmed viper, twisting, dancing - mesmerizing until the flow hit him in the face with the strength of an uppercut.

The anger that floods through his veins is a little bit like that. Sudden, overpowering, and born out of a tiny, tiny mistake.

“Can you stop being so fucking accommodating? For one _fucking_ second, can you _yell back,_ or something?”

Junhui’s face turns paper-white. “Hao,” he says very slowly, “It was just a stupid bowl from Ikea.”

“You don’t get mad at me anymore.”

Junhui scoffs, “You _want me_ to get mad at you?”

“I _want you_ to be _here_ with _me._ ”

Sometimes silence has a taste. It permeates the air, travels from molecule to molecule, impregnating the atmosphere with bitterness. Sometimes silence is like salt.

“You think I’m absent?” Junhui’s voice goes very small at the end. Minghao observes the scene from outside his body, like a floating ghost.

“When was the last time we talked?” he hears himself ask. “Talked, for real. Looked at each other. Do you see me? You won’t even touch me.”

“I touch you plenty,” Junhui pleads, trying to reach for him. Minghao takes a step back.

“You need to down a bottle of ouzo to fuck me, Jun.”

Junhui’s hand stills in the air. “Hao, my parents are in the next room,” he says quietly. His voice is on its way to icy. Not quite there yet, but freezing, liquid slowly solidifying. Minghao closes his eyes. Opens them.

“We can go outside.”

Like cowboys. Guns for hands, face to face.

“We can go -” Junhui repeats, baffled. “What? You really waited to have this fight with me until we were in my parents’ house? On my brother’s birthday?”

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know the typhoon that has taken root within Minghao’s body, at the pit of his stomach, whirlwind, contained but ready for destruction, so _hungry_ for devastation. You can’t keep thunder trapped inside a box.

 

During finals week, every year, Junhui would trek all the way across the city to the Polytechnic to sit with Minghao in the library, a large thermos of iced tea in his bag. There’s a photograph on their fridge, held there by a carrot-shaped magnet, of Minghao asleep on his Physics textbook.

It wasn’t like Junhui could help him _study._ But his presence was a blessing, a Swiss army knife of possibilities. And Minghao never asked for it - it was given freely, unprompted, every year. The distraction, the food, the steady wordless support.

 

In this small bathroom in Thessaloniki where Junhui’s father taught him how to shave, Minghao thinks back to finals week.

There is so much he knows, so much be could use. Junhui rarely cries, but Minghao knows where to push, where to stab. He thinks Junhui would know where to hurt him in return - has done it before.

But he thinks back to this picture on their refrigerator. How Jun saw him slip into slumber and took the executive decision to let him have the nap, and snapped a photo on his smartphone, and then _printed out_ the photo and stuck it to the fridge, where they would both see it every morning. He feels dizzy.

“I’m just -” he stutters, “I’m actually - I’m gonna go?”

Stunned, Junhui remains frozen. Minghao leaves the bathroom, the corner of his eyes stinging, his vision blurring. He almost walks into Junhui’s mom in the corridor.

“Are you okay, honey?” she asks, hands on his shoulders to stabilize him.

“Yeah, I - I’m sorry -”

He thinks she calls after him, but he’s not sure. He grabs his bag, his phone. The car keys are dangling from a coat hanger in the entryway. He doesn’t take them.

 

The train is tagged from top to bottom, football team logos and political slogans and women’s names, red and green and yellow and black. It speeds down the railway like water, smooth glide, wheels hissing softly. Minghao presses his cheek to the cold glass of the window on his right, lets the gentle rhythm of the journey rock him to some semblance of sleep.

He’s had the time to panic from Thessaloniki to Eginio. The train is almost out of Thessaly now, and he has resigned himself to never being welcome in the Wen household again. It will be easier, maybe. If Jun’s mom hates him, if all the doors are closed for good.

Somewhere along the way loving Junhui became monumental. And Minghao already didn’t know what to do with a love that shapes and transforms, and he certainly does not know what to make of a love that rigidifies.

When you love like a sea monster, octopus limbs, pointed teeth and angry talons - when you love like Circe, your magic wrapped around your lover like chains, tightening - when you love like Achilles, like a man ready for war -

Expectations become prison bars. Love, Minghao is starting to see, is a plant that can only be watered with four hands.

Somewhere along the way, he thinks, they both decided to believe the rain would suffice.

 

The train slows down gradually, the speakers announcing they will be stopping in Larissa for eight minutes. Minghao burrows further into his seat, zips up his hoodie. One good thing about looking so distinctly like a tourist is that no one ever tries to engage in public transportation small talk with him, but he puts on his earphones anyway, just to make sure. If anyone tries to speak with him he thinks he might actually bite them.

The doors open in a _woosh,_ and half the wagon empties itself onto the platform. Then people start coming in. Minghao blinks.

Jun is still wearing the blue t-shirt he had on when Minghao left the house, the one with a hole in the left sleeve and the lettering half washed off, the one he only puts on when he’s doing chores. His face is red. His chest is heaving.

“Minghao,” he says, standing in the middle of the row, blocking everyone.

“What the fuck,” Minghao mutters, dumbfounded.

Junhui finds purchase against one of the seats. “Do you know how hard it is to tail a train?”

“Someone’s trying to walk past you,” Minghao gestures to the old lady behind him.

“Oh,” Junhui says, before apologizing in Greek and sliding into an empty spot. There is a seat between the two of them now like a white flag, a careful border.

“You followed me with the _car?”_ Minghao squints.

“Well, I thought I would just have to pick you up from downtown,” Junhui bites his bottom lip. He’s looking at Minghao like he’s making sure he’s not a figment of his imagination. “But then I saw you walk into the station.” Minghao doesn’t know what to say to that. The wagon shakes around them as the train engine starts back up again. “ _I’m_ supposed to be the drama queen, Hao,” Jun says softly.

Minghao feels like someone just stepped on his solar plexus. Boys can cry, but men certainly don’t. Minghao never was very good at being an adult.

He should say sorry. He _is_ sorry. For the way he left, at least. But _sorry_ presupposes an explanation, and Minghao doesn’t have a real one. He has _I was suffocating in that house_ and _I was suffocating in that car_ and _I never want you to leave but I know you’re going to so what if I leave instead what if I leave first what if what if what if -_

“Can I sit next to you?” Junhui asks. Minghao shrugs, scoots to the side. Strangers are still looking at them, intrigued. Minghao wishes for the earth to swallow him whole. “I’m kind of pissed at you,” Junhui continues, raising one arm, “But you look like a kicked puppy, so I’m going to hug you first.”

He’s so solid and real against Minghao. The warmth of his body spreads like sun rays through an open window, down to Minghao’s bone marrow. His nose resting against Junhui’s collarbone, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Here, safer, he mumbles it finally - _I’m sorry._

He could become melted metal just like this, mold himself into any shape just for the privilege of being held.

Junhui cards hesitant fingers through his hair. Touching someone you’ve seen naked enough times to draw him from memory is a skill one loses with difficulty, a little bit like riding a bike. Body against body, heart to heart, Minghao inhales fully for what feels like the first time in months.

Jun whispers into his hair, “You’ve been this sad all this time?” Minghao nods. Lips press to the side of his head. “Xiao Hao, you cannot keep all this inside. It will eat you.”

He goes to move back so they can look at each other but Minghao’s grip tightens in his shirt, keeping him there. He doesn’t think he can have this conversation eye to eye.

“I thought it would hurt less,” he says. “If I pushed you away myself.”

He can’t see it, but he knows Junhui is raising his eyebrows just from the way his voice goes a little higher. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Absolutely terrible, thank you for asking,” Minghao answers. He’s aiming for sarcastic but it just comes out awfully earnest instead. Junhui kisses his temple again, and then he untangles himself from Minghao’s embrace. This time Minghao lets him go.

 

They ride all the way back to Athens like this, mirror images on these ratty train seats, turned towards each other.

“You didn’t even take your keys,” Junhui says. He’s holding a paper cup of steaming Lipton English Breakfast Minghao went to pick up from the restaurant wagon earlier. Outside, the night has fallen over the moving landscape like a large coat.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Minghao says, cheeks flushed. “I just really needed to get out of the house. And then it felt catastrophic so I needed to get out of the city, too.”

Junhui watched him slam the door and run away, then, and still went to check if Minghao had forgotten his things. Minghao kind of wants to puke, or cry, or both.

“I’m really sorry, Hao,” Junhui says. He sounds miserable.  

Minghao frowns. “What are _you_ sorry for?”

“You’ve been upset all this time, and I - I knew. Of course I knew. But I thought - I thought it would go away. If I gave you space. But you wanted the opposite of space.”

“Sometimes,” Minghao says, hating how small it comes out, “It just feels like I love you so much more than you could ever love me.”

Junhui laughs bitterly at that. “I don’t think you were ever aware of how much I love you.” He shifts on his seat, ends up sitting on his ankle. “I don’t think you - God, Minghao, I was ready to - there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you.”

“It just didn’t feel like it,” Minghao repeats, looking away. “To me.”

“Yes,” Junhui sighs, “I do understand that now.” He brings two hesitant fingers to Minghao’s jawline, a slow caress. “Hey, look at me.” Minghao does. Junhui’s brown eyes glimmer under the harsh artificial light. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I should have said something. I was really scared too. That if we talked about it, if we - if we put words on it - you would just leave.”

“So you gave me space.”

“I gave you space,” Junhui nods. Minghao’s mind flashes back to the scene in the bathroom, Junhui’s hurt expression - _You think I’m absent?_

It makes a little bit more sense now.

“Wen Junhui,” he says, brows furrowing, “When have I ever wanted space from you?”

“Oh,” Jun huffs, and that - that’s better. Humor, even dry, that’s better. “So many times, Hao, come on. Your default setting is _annoyed.”_

Minghao rolls his eyes. “Not _that_ kind of space.”

Junhui smirks, fond. Minghao wants to wrap himself in that fondness, like a cat curling up under the sun. “They make different models at the space factory?”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“I do know what you mean,” Jun says soberly, his smile dying again. “Can you give me your hand?”

Minghao gives him his hand. Jun squeezes it, then brings it up, plants a light kiss to the back. Minghao feels himself blushing again.

“We’re in public.”

“I’m way past caring,” Junhui dismisses him. “Listen to me. We’re almost in the city. We’re going to go back to our place, and sleep in our bed. I know we’re not okay. I hurt you and you hurt me.” He kisses Minghao’s hand again. “But we can talk about that tomorrow. And we can - we can be okay. Even if we aren’t right now.”

He sounds - unsure, but hopeful. Like it’s all in Minghao’s hands.

Minghao feels like a deflated balloon.

“We can talk,” he nods. “And we can be okay.”

 

In the night, the Athenian breeze is icy. Minghao zips his hoodie all the way to the collar.

“Ah, shit, I don’t know where the Mercedes is,” Jun laughs shakily. “I was so focused on catching your train I left it in the parking lot but I can’t remember where. I need to call my parents - someone needs to check it’s not gonna get towed, or something -”

Minghao kisses him. It’s tentative, a question - but an affirmation, too. Junhui makes a surprised sound at the back of his throat but gets with the program, wraps one arm around Minghao’s shoulders and deepens the kiss, slowly.

“Oh,” he breathes out, resting his forehead at the juncture of Minghao’s neck, voice young. Minghao is starting to see it with clarity - how much Junhui was faking it too. “I missed you. I _missed_ you.”

 

He knows mending relationships is like mending bones - it takes time, and plaster, and care. But in the bus he cannot stop staring at Junhui, like a man in the desert grasping the mirage of an oasis. On the threshold of their apartment, he watches him unlock their door, _their door,_ and it’s like waking up from the longest, deepest slumber. In the kitchen drawers there is a set of bronze cutlery they chose together. In the bathroom, on a shelf Minghao nailed to the tiled wall, their two toothbrushes stand next to each other - blue and red.

The mattress sinks under the combined weight of their bodies. Minghao buries his face in the dip between Junhui’s shoulder blades, inhales, takes in the smell of their laundry detergent and the perfume he got Junhui for Christmas last year.

 

In the morning they skype Junhui’s parents and his father promises to go rescue the old Mercedes. Then they take the bus to the Benaki museum and go sit in the sculpture garden. It’s Minghao’s idea. As much as he hates the eyes of strangers on him, that way they cannot start yelling - they will have to talk.

 

Odysseus comes home - Odysseus returns - but the story doesn’t end there. His son does not know him. His dog is dead. His island has grown and shrunk and grown again. Fire has taken trees, and water has taken sand, and time has taken people. Ithaka waits for no one.

 

In movies the curtain falls after the first kiss.

But after the first kiss comes the first fight, and the first night sleeping on the couch, and the first time wondering if some pastures are greener after all.

After the first kiss come better kisses, too - the kind of kisses you only get with practice, the riding-a-bike type of kisses, the _I could find you with my eyes closed_ type of kisses, the _you have a side of the bed_ type of kisses.

 

Odysseus comes home and Penelope awaits by their tree, the one he carved their marital bed out of, the one he built their house around with his bare, tired hands. She knows him by his scars. She knows him by the words within his words.

 

Sitting on a bench surrounded by the noise of Athena’s city, the air smelling of gasoline and also of orange flowers, Minghao discovers why they call it _drifting apart._ For six long frozen months he was on a raft, his arms insufficient paddles against the stormy sea.

He tells Junhui, _I was on the water. I didn’t know how to make it back home._

And Junhui answers, patient, every word a stone, _take my hand._

_To brave the Atlantic you build a boat. The ocean will not always welcome you. When the black clouds eat away the sky, you must ride on. Behind the grey there is an island. Beyond the sirens’ call there is an island. After you’ve escaped the Cyclops there is an island._

The seafarer’s journey begins with an unwashed mug in the sink. Silent anger turns milk sour. Minghao remembers shying away from questioning hands and then wondering why the bed felt cold. Men do not speak enough, he decides. Junhui never fucking shuts up and yet somehow they made it through days and days and days of watching a wound fester while uselessly holding gauze.

He’s lucky Junhui is stubborn. Junhui is lucky _Minghao_ is stubborn. Both incapable of letting go, leaving claw marks on each other at every attempt.

He draws a map for Junhui. This is how you hurt me. These are the tender spots you jammed your angles into. This is the road trip we should have taken, down the sinews uniting muscle to bone - first stop _abandonment issues,_ second stop _fear of the unknown._ Now draw me your own magna carta, every city a bruise. Here is that night you tried to kiss me and I said I was tired and you could see in my eyes I was lying. Here are the thirty-seven evenings I stayed late at work to avoid a silent dinner. Here is that Sunday morning where you washed the reds with the whites and I called you stupid and you called me heartless and we both pretended we weren’t crying.

And now like pirates they exchange maps, a truth for a truth.

 _I refuse to give up on you,_ Junhui told him in the train. _I’ve known you for three quarters of my life. I’ve known you with scraped knees and I’ve known you with acne and I’ve known you when you were applying to college. It would take so much more to scare me away._

 

 

For Fengjun’s fifteenth birthday, they spend an entire day going from bookstore to bookstore for the perfect gift. In the sixth one, hands full of novels Minghao isn’t quite sure either of them likes enough for themselves, let alone a teenager, they stare at each other for a long silent minute before bursting into bright laughter.

They end up driving to Jumbo.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written for k-pop olymfics 2019 as part of team alternate universe 2. olymfics is a challenge in which participants write fics based on prompt sets and compete against other teams of writers, organized by genre. competition winners are chosen by the readers, so please rate this fic using [this survey](https://forms.gle/5mf4FTmvMUMCJ9d26)!
> 
> <3


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